The government should extend voting hours or adopt other measures during next month’s local elections to protect the voting rights of people in COVID-19 isolation, the New Power Party (NPP) caucus said in a plenary session yesterday.
“Taiwan has about 30,000 to 40,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 per day. Should the pandemic remain at a high and stable plateau, and the government continue to require people with COVID-19 to isolate, about 200,000 to 300,000 voters would be in quarantine during the election, which is almost equal to the population of Hualien County or Keelung,” NPP Legislator Claire Wang (王婉諭) told a news conference in Taipei.
“The government should not take this matter lightly,” Wang said.
Photo: Liang Cheng-hui, Taipei Times
In addition to elections for county commissioners, mayors and city councilors, a referendum to lower the voting age from 20 to 18 is also to be held on Nov. 26, Wang said.
For the referendum to pass, 9.65 million eligible voters must vote “yes” to the constitutional amendment, Wang said.
“If other political parties are serious about lowering the voting age to 18, they should start paying attention to the voting rights of people who are isolated due to COVID-19 on election day,” she said.
“Should the referendum fail to pass because it was 200,000 votes shy from the threshold, it would deal a major blow to constitutional reform efforts and cause Taiwan’s democracy to backslide,” she said.
“This would be an unacceptable scenario, for which the ruling Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] would need to take full responsibility,” she added.
NPP caucus whip Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) said that South Korea has extended voting hours from 6pm to 7:30pm, allowing isolated voters to cast their ballots at the polls during extended hours.
Japan uses an absentee ballot system that allows isolated voters to send their ballots by mail, he said.
“We have proposed a motion that would require Central Election Commission [CEC] and Central Epidemic Command Center [CECC] to extend voting hours, arrange voters to take turns voting in different hours or adopt other means to protect the voting rights of those who are isolated because of COVID-19,” Chiu said.
The NPP caucus would also help voters seek constitutional interpretations if their voting rights are infringed upon due to negligence by the agencies, he said.
Taiwan has moved from a “zero COVID-19” policy to living with the virus, as 99.5 percent of the confirmed cases have mild symptoms, which is line with disease prevention policies in most countries around the world, NPP Chairwoman Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said.
“Voting is a constitutionally protected right, and it is the government’s duty to find ways to allow people who have contracted the virus and are in quarantine to go to the polls and cast their votes,” Chen said.
“The CEC and CECC should not infringe on people’s voting rights on the grounds of preventing the spread of the coronavirus,” she added.
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